Cyrus Brume
by Greebosears
Summary: Short story about a vampire exterminator in over his head.


_Nightforce After Action Report_  
_Jackson, MS, October 11, 2021_  
_Howard Johnson Inn, 585 E. Beasely Rd._  
_Mission Type: Incursion, Multiple Targets_

_Jackson Nightforce office received a call at 0120hrs from hotel management concerning a possible vampire incursion on the third floor with multiple casualties. Management was unsure how many vampires or victims remain, because they were unable to access the third floor without endangering staff and guests. Jackson police were unresponsive beyond monitoring the situation from the parking lot. Exterminator Cyrus Brume was dispatched to the location for clean up…_

My arm aches from the weight of the Mossberg 12 gauge, just background noise at this point. There are several vampires on the other side of the elevator doors, screaming to get in, so fatigue barely registers. Even though I know they can't open the doors, I won't let myself lower the big pump action shotgun. There's a hundred ways to die at this job, and the first 50 or so all begin with me letting my guard down.

Would have taken the stairs but I've got a plan. Almost makes me smile, but I've got a bad feeling about this job, haven't really had that before, like a dread biscuit lodged behind my sternum. I'm used to the adrenaline jitters and pre-performance anxiety shit, comes with every job, but not like this, this is different.

I fucking hate Mississippi. Nightforce suites think redneck vampires pose less of a threat, so the Jackson office gets no budget increases…just gets me, vampire exterminator Cyrus Brume. _Fuck_. Accidentally kill one civilian in Houston and they send you to the sticks. Not my fault a homeless drunk jumped out of that culvert. Vampires had eaten most of the homeless by then anyway—a fact run rampant on most vampire conspiracy websites—or turned them into more vampires, and exterminators learn real quick in this job, shoot first and decide later whether you should have, or else you won't have the job for long.

I've got the elevator parked on the third floor at the moment, emergency alarm screaming in my ear, commingling irritably with the vampire screams on the other side of the doors. I've kept it like this for about a minute, waiting as the vamps gather hungrily outside the elevator, stirred up from the alarm. I know at some point I'm gonna have to punch the red button and let the doors open, but I'm hesitating. I always hesitate at first, some rational part of my mind screaming that these are fucking vampires and I should haul my ass back to the UPS loading docks, and for a second I almost do it, shocking me. But I always rack the slide and blast away, just like I'm about to do now.

My Mossberg's loaded with special silver-plated , yeah, biggest part of the small budget I do have, but they're devastating, one shot one kill. Helps too when you stumble across a bear in the woods instead of a vampire. Those dead dumb bastards at AS:VS used to use fucking paintball guns filled with something anti-vamp, but now they're all dead, including that documentary kid, Embry. Didn't last a week in the field. He's a vampire now, wanders the woods outside of town. No exterminator has had the heart to go out there and put him down, me included. So that just leaves me, one lone Nightforce vampire exterminator to cover the entire state of Mississippi.

I don't know if this is going to work. I've never seen anyone do this with an elevator before, in person or in a movie. Maybe I should have tested my plan on the second floor. Too late now; as soon as I hit the button the doors are gonna open. _Fuck me. Here goes nothin'…_

_…Exterminator Brume arrived at the hotel at approximately 0200hrs. After checking in with police at the scene, who, according to Exterminator Brume, waived him on…sheepishly, he added (Previous may be subject to redaction.) Exterminator Brume donned required protective gear and weaponry and began cleanup preliminaries, having hotel management fill out required paperwork—Nightforce contract, non-liability waiver, etc.—and ensuring all hotel staff and guests not already trapped on the third floor were safely relocated outside for police protection, he then proceeded with the cleanup…_

…Trying to control my breathing, I buttress my right foot against the back wall of the elevator, lean forward a bit, and with the shotgun now poised and pointed at the door, I push the red button…and three seconds later I yank it back out again, hard, fighting the panic. I jerk back and slam the shotgun butt into my right shoulder and grip the trigger, expecting to be fucked because the doors will continue to open and a small horde of feral vampires will rush the elevator and eat me. But they don't!

Vampires are stupid, well, most of them, unless they're of the _intelligent_ variety. I've never seen one of those myself, especially not in Jackson, MS. The few that Nightforce supposedly exterminated in Houston while I was stationed there were taken out by Nightforce's squad of elite exterminators, ex spec-ops badasses who get flown around the country in a Nightforce private jet to exterminate the most troublesome vampires, namely the smart ones, especially since a few of them have been discovered traveling in pairs, not often but still, quite the deadly duo. Bunch of cocky bastards, the Nightforce's A Team. I secretly get amused when one of them gets eaten, and try not to smile during the obligatory moment of silence in the online morning briefing the next day. Anyway, the great majority of vamps are just mindless, screaming feeders, like sharks without the deadly fluid grace or their own week on TV.

When I yank the red button, the alarm starts back up and the doors, which had begun to slide open, stop, leaving a six inch gap between them, not wide enough for the screaming vampires on the other side to get through, but wide enough for me to shove the shotgun barrel in the mouth—their mouths are always open—of the first vampire to attack the crack, what used to be a business man, still wearing his tie…but oddly no pants. Hard to say what the silver-coated slug does to the back of his head, because the vampire vanishes behind a cloud of blue smoke and the blast of my Mossberg. _Jackass!_ I forgot to put in my earplugs and the roar from the big 12 gauge in the tight space of the elevator has my ears ringing bad.

But my strategy has worked. I continue to pump and fire, pump and fire, pump and fire, as the dumb blood suckers, one after the other, try desperately to get at me through the crack in the doors. The elevator vibrates under my feet with every blast, pounding my ears. Men, women—two of them naked—and sadly a young girl, no older than eight, rabid, foaming blood at the mouth, who almost gets through the crack, has one leg and half her body through before I lower the gun and the slug nearly tears her in half, slamming what's left of her to the floor, right in the crack, where she is immediately trampled by a young woman in a t-shirt, her bare feet swimming in the poor kid's guts. I happen to notice that the woman and the girl wear matching friendship bracelets, like ones you make at camp, but I fire anyway, exploding the woman's head, sending her back into the darkness beyond. I fire until the gun is empty and the elevator is so full of smoke it makes my eyes water, and now my ears feel like they're bleeding. The Mossberg holds 8 rounds plus one in the chamber. _I just killed nine vampires!_ And shockingly, there are still more in the hallway, two or three by the sound of it. Really glad I didn't take the stairs. How could so many have gotten into the hotel unnoticed, unless one or two had been turning the guests, but it takes hours for a person to turn once bitten, and I can't believe any of the guests would have been stupid enough to open their door and let in some rabid vampire.

The vampire thrashing in the crack now, what used to be a middle-aged man in boxers with blood running down his beer belly, eyes rolling round his bald head, reaches for me with meaty, blood-soaked hands—looks like he's been busy digging through someone's insides—but instead of taking precious time to reload the Mossberg, I pull my bulldog .44 from the shoulder holster under my jacket, and put a magnum hollow point through its eye, snapping what's left of his head back and tossing him onto the growing pile of dead vamps behind him. I don't have to fire the the big handgun but two more times, it's massive kick throwing my hand straight up as it sent the last of the vampires into oblivion.

It's quiet now except for the screech of the elevator alarm. I realize I've been holding my breath and now it returns in three big gulps of air. Keeping my eye on the crack—safety first—I immediately put in the earplugs I should have before I got started, light a much needed cigarette, and reload the .44 and the shotgun. I'm feeling a little better, more steady now that I've started, always do, but that dread biscuit still molders atop my guts. Only when I feel like I got all my poop in a group, do I stomp the butt out on the floor, raise the shotgun with one hand and hit the red button with the other…

_…Based on the scope of the violence and number of bodies later discovered on the third floor, it is evident Exterminator Brume encountered strong resistance from multiple vampires (At least 12 according to the wounds, not counting another 23 killed by the feral vampires themselves according to hotel registration. Nightforce Quality Control specialists later confirmed the alarming numbers of feral vampires encountered during the extermination, and also partially verified Exterminator Brume's participation in the encounter that followed…(Following redacted for security reasons)…_

The doors slide open. I almost pull the trigger out of pure reflex, just in case, but there is no need. All the lights in the hallway are out for some reason, not something I would have expected raging vamps to do. The only light comes from inside the elevator, illuminating what I have to say is the single most brutal display of carnage I have ever seen…and only a marginal amount of the blood, brains, and gore splattered about the place came from my efforts. There had been some kind Bacchanalian vampire blood orgy here well before I arrived that included everyone on the floor, whether they wanted to be included or not. I don't expect to find anyone alive.

I poke my head out of the elevator and put it on a swivel, looking left, right, left right, until I'm sure there are no vamps coming from either direction. The floorplan of the hotel—there's a map right across from the elevator—is shaped like a capital H, with the elevator occupying the cross bar in the middle. I hear nothing, so I step carefully over the trampled remains of the little girl and move left away from my pile of vampire corpses, doing my best not step in anything too wet or jiggly. Everything smells of copper, meat, and shit. I always go left during inside jobs and continue to go left at every opportunity until I eventually come full circle right back where I started, which means I'm going to have to pass the elevator once after searching and clearing all the rooms on the left side of the H so I can search the right, then finish back at the elevator. I'm a little pissed as the elevator begins to close behind me, light from the inside narrowing in the hallway, so I lurch back, stopping the doors, reopening them. I pull out an old railroad spike I keep in my gear for just this type of thing and jamb it in the crack between the elevator and the floor where there aren't any pieces of little girl to keep the doors open, then I clip a flashlight in place under the shotgun barrel. I'm pissed, not at the elevator, but at the cheap ass Nightforce corporate beancounters, who think Jackson, or all of Mississippi for that mater, doesn't merit the expense of a second or third exterminator.

Which is obviously bullshit for a job like this. The hallways are all dark, which already has me spooked, not something you normally see in vampire behavior, and I have learned that everything found more abnormal in this already abnormal job usually serves as a precursor to something even _more_ abnormal and probably fatal. I really need two or three more exterminators for this. I'm going to have to go into each room to clear it, making the mission damn near impossible to control. Anyone could walk in and out of any of the other rooms while I am searching a room, even the rooms I've already searched.

"This is fucked," I blurt, and instantly regret the sound of my voice, but nothing happens and I relax a little, but only a little.

But that gives me an idea, though I need better line of sight for it, so I go left, as usual, my back against the wall until I can see up the long hallway opposite my position. All clear, if you don't count the profusion of disarticulated body parts, piles of heads and torsos, and casks of blood splashed all over everything. Then I slide quickly to the wall opposite me, shotgun always up, so I can see the other direction down the long hallway. Still nothing. _Here goes…_

_…Upon completion of QC's debriefing, it was determined that Exterminator Brume was not responsible for the outcome of the encounter. Without prior intelligence, it was not possible for Exterminator Brume to have predicted the scale of the vampire incursion, the impossible odds he faced, or the unfortunate ramifications of his final encounter with… (Following redacted for security reasons)…_

…I slip into the long hallway, head still on a swivel, crossing it, and put my back to the wall so I can see past the elevator to the hallway on other side of the H and all the way up and down this hallway. Now I have line of site in every direction around me. But then I jump in panic when the elevator alarm starts back up again, attacking my already rapidly diminishing sense of calm. It must get angry when you spike its doors open.

I clear my throat and yell, "Here I am, motherfuckers! Come and get it!"

And wait for an attack. If I can't effectively search for vamp stragglers, then I'll just make them come to me, though I don't know why any remaining vamps wouldn't have already run toward the barrage of gunfire. I don't expect a verbal response from anyone living. Not a chance. My light is good, so I can see down both directions of the hallway and all the room doors are stuck open, generally by some body part or other _placed_ like a doorjamb. If there's anyone left alive, they're well hid.

But then, beyond all comprehension, I just manage to hear a woman's voice through the whine of the alarm, coming from the other side of the H, to the right down the other long hallway. It is distant and muffled but sounds like, like, _laughing_, and then it stops. I wait but it doesn't repeat.

I'm baffled and not a little freaked out. Sweat drips down my temple and I'm really having to watch my breathing. Too many things about this extermination are off. First, just the number of vampires, way too many for an inside job, especially a hotel. Occasionally I'll see feral vamps accumulate in a country house or barn after eating the owners, some kind of herd thing, but not in a city and certainly not at a Howard Johnson. Then there's the killed lights. No dumb vampi…

It suddenly hits me and it all makes horrifying sense, the numbers, the lights, all the open doors, held open, on purpose, like whoever did it put thought into it…and now laughter amid the most un-amusing and gruesome display of violence and murder I have ever seen, and I've seen some nasty shit. There's a woman's head perched atop the fire extinguisher for God sakes.

And there's a fucking _intelligent_ female vampire somewhere down that other hallway!

I'm kind of frozen in place. It's not that my legs won't move but that I don't want them to, not unless I make them take me back to the elevator. I wonder why she hasn't come for me already. I mean, from the state of the place she obviously has no compunctions about killing, if anything, she's fucking enthusiastic and psychotically inventive with it. But then the Mossberg shifts against my shoulder and I get it. She's not stupid. A 12 gauge slug will kill her dead just as easily as any feral vampire. All that stake-through-the-heart bullshit is just that, bullshit.

And the crafty bitch is doing to me what I tried with her feral minions. The laughter. _She wants me to come to her._

"Fuck you, you dead bitch!"

Another quiet trickle of laughter and then just the alarm. Now I'm seriously considering bugging out, calling Nightforce, and quitting, let them bring in the A team to deal with this psychopathic vampire bitch, just go downstairs and tell the hotel people and the cops to barricade the third floor and wait for the heavy hitters. But that would make me just as bad the cops, too scared of getting eaten to do anything about it, and this is my job, a job I take pride in, one the government refuses to do but that still needs to get done. No telling how many more people she'll kill if she gets out of here.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck," I whisper, suddenly dying for a smoke, and a stiff drink.

_She can't be that dangerous though, can she?_ It's not like the movies. She doesn't have any supernatural powers. She can't control my mind or turn into a bat or into mist, doesn't have super strength or speed…as far as I know. Really wish I had finished the _Nightforce Exterminators Manual_, might have been something in there about the best way to take her out. I briefly consider turning on my smartphone and calling corporate, see if they have any suggestions, maybe they'll even order me to bug out, though I doubt it. So I don't. The call wouldn't look good in my file anyway.

_I gotta fuckin' do this,_ I think, waiting for the resignation that doesn't come.

I swallow my fear, take a deep breath, and quietly but quickly move past the elevator, gun up, dodging the carnage as best I can, letting the slow Doppler effect of the alarm shift from in front to behind me, and put my back to the wall adjacent to the other long hallway, facing the direction from which I heard the laughter. I'm not worried about anyone behind me, don't think that's her plan. _A vampire with a plan. Fuck._ And even if she has left some feral back up that hallway, it'd probably be squatting in a room or something and I couldn't do anything about it anyway.

She has left someone for me though, two someones in fact, blocking my way to her, wherever she is, and for a second I almost shit myself. With my head poked out, flashlight showing as much of the hallway as I can, I see two ferals, two very large and twitchy ferals, so twitchy that in the sparse and subtle movement of light and darkness, they almost look like they're dancing under a strobe. Both ferals are male, well over six feet, stationed half way up the hallway, and they're so obviously starved that their skin has begun to flake off in dry chunks as the lack of fresh blood desiccates their bodies. This is what has caused the uncontrollable twitching. These are the worst kind of feral vampires, the ones trapped in a room for weeks with no blood, or locked in a basement by a grieving family without heart to kill it or the stones to bring it a victim. So, when the screaming gets to be too much, or granny wanders down to see her baby and gets eaten, they finally call us. Twitchers are the toughest to take down because they tend to keep coming after you've shot them up, their hunger so maddening it can even drive their bodies onward for several seconds after their heads are blown off. I've seen it. They're the most ferocious and dangerous of vampires…though I haven't met her yet. And these two starved twitchers are big, look like they used to play linebacker or bounce at a strip club, formidable even before being turned into a starved flesh eater. They're not charging me though, which is odd. I know they can see me. I'm about to step fully into the corridor and see how they handle my Mossberg, when I notice that they have shackles around their necks, and from the back of the shackles trail thick, rusty chains that recede into the darkness behind them.

From the same darkness comes the trickle of laughter again, mirthful, girlish, and yet disturbingly wet, like she's just taken a sip of something thick. And then I begin to see her as she strolls into the light, like a materializing ghost, all casual and relaxed. Happy. She's surprisingly well-kempt given the amount of explosive carnage precipitated around her, her white silk blouse only partially doused in blood, and her black slacks aren't spattered in gore. And though she does have blood running down her chin from the human heart she's currently eating like an apple, the reddest thing about her is her long hair. Total carrot top, freckles and all, though since her skin is so pale, so dead, the freckles are dark, almost black. She was mid thirties when she was turned and was once attractive, maybe even refined, but now it's kind of hard to get past the whole undead, heart-eating thing. She's wearing spotless Christian Louboutin heals, the ones with the red soles—I know that's what they are because Kendall Jenner wore them with that dress you could see her ass through—and as she ambles forward, she makes every effort to avoid getting any blood spatter on them.

The second I see her I almost jump out and start blasting until the shotgun clicks, but I cant. In the hand not wrapped around a freshly purloined heart, she carries a raised handgun, a big one, looks like a Sig Saur in the dim light. Nasty, lots of big bullets. I don't like automatics, they can jamb, and in this job, where there tends to be a lot of sticky blood, a jammed pistol means an eaten exterminator. She's got it pointed right at my light, but no way she can see me in the glare..._But_ _can she?…What if she has super vision!_ I quickly shake the thought from my head, but regardless, I'm really reluctant to jump out and start blasting. I'm not wearing a vest, not usually needed since a feral would try to eat a gun before using it, and vests are bulky and slow me down. So I don't think I'm up for dodging bullets, or worse, taking a few in the chest. For all I know she's a crack shot. This is Mississippi after all.

She's moseyed up behind the two twitchers now, gun raised between them and pointed right at me. I dare not retract my head for cover and let the three of them out of my sight. Now I think, _She can't be that good of a shot._ She takes a hard bite out of the heart, like it's an old piece of jerky. Cardiac muscle is sinewy and tough. Unlike most muscle, the heart has had a lifetime of continuous exercise, makes for chewy, difficult eating, especially raw. She eyeballs me as she violently masticates the flesh, more blood running down her chin.

I'm frozen, don't know what to do. I can still run away. But then she speaks and my blood runs cold.

"Hello Cyrus." Though thick with blood, her voice is surprisingly high-pitched, almost like a girls, makes for the creepy laugh. She's from Mississippi, or at least somewhere in the south, because she says my name like CYrus with hard emphasis on the CY, like SIGHrus. But what raises the hair on my forearms is that she knows my fucking name! "Your webpage doesn't do you justice."

"My webpage?" I blurt, confused and frightened. I don't have a webpage. What the hell is happening?

"Yes, silly. The one on the Nightforce website, has your little picture and everything." I'm baffled until I realize she's talking about the Jackson Nightforce page and my employee bio. I've never read it. Her closeness to the twitchers has them even more agitated and they wrench their necks against the chains, arms stretched out toward me, straining. "For instance," she continues, leaning against the twitchers, infuriating them even more, "it says nothing about how skilled you may or may not be. So, we thought an interview wouldn't be out of the question, don't you agree? You've done fabulously so far, but how about we turn up the heat a little?"

"What interview? What are you talking about?" I'm sweating all over, glad I'm wearing gloves. I should run. I really should run, but there's too much confused, morbid fascination exploding in my head. "Who the fuck are you?"

She laughs, delighted, full-throated, filling the hotel floor over the alarm. The Twitchers scream in response. _Okay, fuck this, I'm outta here._ But then she says, "All in good time, dear boy, but first…"

Opening her mouth, revealing teeth already chipped and ground to jagged points from too many bone-filled meals, she stuffs the heart into it, keeping it there. She raises a bloody index finger, indicating that I should hold on a bit, then she casually unhooks the chain from the back of a twitcher's shackle. Before the heavy chain even thumps on the carpet, the feral twitcher rockets toward me. _Yup, linebacker._ He's not even a third the way to me before she starts shooting at me, four quick rounds that somehow miss both the feral and me, but still pelt me with bloodstained plaster from the wall. I get one hasty shot off with the Mossberg that I'm sure hits nothing and fall back away from the intersection, where I immediately trip backwards and fall on my ass from the pile of feral corpses I've left behind.

Sheer, unadulterated horror and panic, that's what I feel as I scramble backwards on my ass through pools of blood back out of the elevator light, kicking the pile with my boots, repositioning a few of the wet, reeking corpses, just as the twitcher slams into the very spot that I had just stood in, putting a head-and-shoulder-sized hole in the wall. Screaming, it careens toward me, dry flesh flying off its bones from the impact. But I'm firing now, as fast as my arms can rack and fire. The feral's only ten feet away, so the powerful slugs will do massive damage to the its desiccated flesh. The first shot rips its right arm completely off at the shoulder in a spray of dead skin and meat, and also some more moldy, slightly damp flesh from deeper inside. The feral's momentum is pretty good though, so the slug spins it around to the right like a top even as it continues to barrel toward me, undaunted. The sudden change in its vector means I miss with my second and third shots, but the fourth takes it square in the chest as it leaps toward me, crazed hunger writ large all over its decaying face. The discharge is so close that it instantly changes the flightpath of the descending feral, sending it backward in an explosion of dead flesh, bone, and rotted innards, landing on the pile.

Just as I'm rising to my knees and firing my fifth slug into its head, the second feral twitcher does its best Von Miller and bends around the corner at full speed. _She couldn't have waited, could she?_ Its mindless, berserk momentum is too much and it also trips over what's left of my corpse pile, sending it crashing by directly to my left, head over heels. It manages one swing as it stumbles by with a decaying hand, opened into a rigid claw, which catches me right in the face, bloodying my nose and giving me three bloody gashes diagonally down my face. I scramble to the right on my knees, spinning so I can take another shot while the feral is prone...with a sudden itch in the back of my head that _she's_ going to come around the corner at any moment and blow my brains out of my face while I'm not looking. I miss my sixth shot high because of the distraction, but manage to nail the fire extinguisher instead—the one with the mounted woman's head—which explodes into an instantaneous cloud of CO2 gas that obscures everything. Now I'm panicking again, scrambling backwards once more, away from where I last saw the screaming feral, firing my seventh and eighth slugs blindly into the fog. One of them must have hit, because there's an abrupt shift in its screaming, from loud and hungry to more of a garbled keening. I'm off balance so the powerful Mossberg has put me on my back and I find myself sliding through the little girl's guts into the elevator.

Back against the wall, squinting in the now garish light of the elevator, I raise the Mossberg for my final shot just as the feral twitcher stumbles out of the CO2 fog toward me. Its lower jaw is blown off, thus the garbled screams. _At least it can't eat me,_ I think, as I slam the rack and pull the trigger for the last time, blowing the rest of its head off and relegating its rickety corpse to the top of the pile…

_...Nightforce investigators reported in the weeks following the Howard Johnson Massacre that Exterminator Brume's remains were never found. It is highly suspected that Brume has been turned, though Nightforce has discovered no evidence to support such a theory. It is to be noted that the Jackson Nightforce vehicle is also missing. _

_Subsequently, Nightforce's stance with regards to…(Following redacted for security reasons)…_

...The elevator alarm is still blaring, so I don't hear him coming as I pull the bulldog and start to reload the Mossberg. Should be looking up, keeping watch while I reload, but I'm out of breath, frightened, and shaky, and I can't load the big shells without watching what I'm doing. So, I'm completely caught off guard when the biggest man I have ever seen steps out of the darkness and fog and fills the elevator door, a bald, black giant in a monochromatic black suit, black shirt, black tie, black shoes, black face, black eyes, black soul. Before I can raise the .44, he swats it out of my hand like I'm some indolent schoolchild and it clatters to the back corner of the elevator, then he wrenches the Mossberg out of my grasp and tosses it back out into the darkness, and as I watch the flashlight dance crazily through dissipating fog then disappear, he grabs my face in his massive fist, his fingers stretching almost around my head. He lifts and squeezes, sliding me up the elevator wall by my head, and through his thick fingers I watch him lean close as he says in a dark chocolate baritone, "Motherfucker, you have any idea how long it took me to condition those two?"

I smell the hint of decay and see a flash of crazed hunger through his blown up pupils, and there's an aura of pure evil about him that can't be natural…and I give up, going limp in his grasp. Now hits the resignation.

_Another one, two of them, and he makes her look like Bella's sweet older sister._

"He'll do," she says, eyeing me from the elevator door, head cocked, heart held up limply in her hand, then she languidly chews another morsel from a ventricle. She's full, bloated, only eating out of reflex now. I hadn't seen her turn the corner.

"You sure? You're the one who will have to bring him up to speed." His voice is thick, so deep, engorged. His large hand tightens around my face and I feel the blood begin to collect in my head, and I think he can feel it too as a moment of agonizing hunger crosses his face and fades. I'm lucky he's already feasted. He's so clean though, cleaner than her.

"Look what he did to them," she says, blithely waving the gnawed heart toward the door and the pile beyond. "And you know we need him inside Nightforce. Tired of them always ruining our parties."

She puts a bloody pout on and he actually laughs, and his laugh is much worse than hers, filled with hunger, pure malice, and joyous hatred.

"I won't do it," I yell desperately through his fingers. "I won't eat anyone, Goddammit! Just fucking kill me."

They both laugh now.

"Cyrus, my boy," he says, releasing my face long enough to get a better grip on my head, jerking it back and exposing my neck, "By tomorrow night, you'll eat your own mother if I drop her in front of you. Now, this may make your eyes water."

He leans farther toward me and I realize my eyes are already watering. I'm crying and I've pissed myself, but I feel no shame, only terror…and then yes, lots and lots of pain.

Later, no longer crying, no longer feel anything but my impending death, I walk out the front door of the hotel, give the all clear to anyone handy, beg battle fatigue, and try desperately to reach the Nightforce truck before anyone notices that my life is steadily draining from me in nauseating waves of enervation and pain, like fire in my veins. No one really wants to get close to me anyway. I'm covered in CO2 residue mixed with all manner of gore and offal originating from several other people. Ironically, people fear getting close to vampire exterminators after a job because they might have been bitten and just aren't telling anyone. If I weren't currently dying I might have laughed. I make it to the truck, an older Yukon Denali, climb inside, and collapse in the seat. After a minute or two I reflexively light a cigarette and look around the truck.

_So this is where I'm gonna die…but then?_

I take a drag and close my eyes to wait it out. It's still only 3AM, got plenty of time. Awhile later I lift my head blearily and look back toward the Howard Johnson. "Damn, I left the Mossberg."

And then everything goes black…_but only for a minute._


End file.
